The term “Socratic method” is so pervasive in education across the disciplines that it has largely lost its meaning, and it has lost its roots in its originator—the historical Socrates. In this article we draw from the original source, Plato's ancient dialogues, to understand the theory and principles behind the questioning used in Socratic method. A deep understanding of Socratic method is particularly timely now as nursing leaders call for increased use of theory‐based debriefing across the nursing (...) curriculum. Socratic questioning is ideally suited as a method for debriefing in nursing classrooms because of its ability to enhance critical thinking and self‐reflection of the learner and because of its basis in care for the learner through a learner‐centred design. We present an analysis of the Socratic method in Plato's works and provide an overview of the key Socratic principles and techniques. We illustrate these principles and techniques with examples of how Socratic teaching can be applied in the nursing classroom, and we address the challenges and rewards for nursing faculty implementing Socratic method. Learning about Socratic method directly from Plato's dialogues can provide a richer and more robust understanding of this key pedagogical technique and help nurse educators practice more intentional and informed Socratic questioning and debriefing. (shrink)

A shortage or backlog of inventory can easily occur due to the backward forecasting method typically used, which will affect the normal flow of funds in pharmacies. This paper proposes a replenishment decision model with back propagation neural network multivariate regression analysis methods. With the regular pattern between sales and individual variables, supplemented with the safety stock empirical formula, an accurate replenishment quantity can be obtained. In the case analysis, this paper takes the sales situation of a pharmacy (...) as an example and tests the accuracy and stability of the model. The results show that the model has good prediction accuracy which can be introduced into the intelligent pharmacy system and used in the replenishment of the intelligent pharmacy to prevent overstocking or a shortage of stock, thus improving the financial situation, reducing the manpower burden of typical retail pharmacy, and helping residents buy medicines. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “A First-Person Analysis Using Third Person-Data as a Generative Method: A Case Study of Surprise in Depression” by Natalie Depraz, Maria Gyemant & Thomas Desmidt. Upshot: Supplementing physiological measures with first-person data involves several benefits and challenges. The collection and analysis of the two types of data might not be optimal within the same procedural framework. Therefore, the synthesis of the two remains problematic.

Annually, more than ten million people in all age groups in the world experience an acquired brain injury, which is a brain injury caused after birth by external forces or certain internal factors. Brain injury survivors are often left with long-term impairments in cognitive, social, or emotional functioning. Despite a promising outset, research on the effectiveness of philosophical dialogues as an educational method for persons with ABI to increase their cognitive, social, and emotional functioning has, to our knowledge, been (...) virtually non-existent. The present research project targets this and uses a pretest-posttest and mixed-method triangulation design and attempts to measure effects of two small-scale interventions carried out in the northern part of Sweden. In this text, the project’s research design, data production, and data processing are described. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to trace a pathway connecting contemplative knowledge and practices with the social sciences. Contemplative knowledge and practices offer material for reflection in social science even concerning their very foundation. I'll found an opportunity for meshing our disciplinary tools with this knowledge as I introduced it in a health promotion program. The result will be a transdisciplinary confluence of different lines of inquiry contributing to a new perspective of self and social action. First of all (...) I will give a definition of contemplative knowledge and practices. Then, I will make a bridge between the contemplative approach and the social sciences, showing the contribution that symbolic interactionism can play. I will illustrate the perspective drawing on an action research program called Auriga aimed at smoking cessation and reduction among health professionals. The aim of this paper is focused on the specification of the conceptual background in which such kind of program has been developed. Finally, I outline some implications it could represent for what might be called transformative sociology. I believe that contemplative knowledge could contribute to disentangle some of the unanswered questions and concerns in the social sciences, once they dismiss for a while their scientistic perspective. The secular redefinition of tools mainly belonging to the wisdom traditions represents an innovation that can reshape what we intend by the self and experience, contributing to what is called the “social transformation from within,” a pragmatic and wise approach to change at any level. (shrink)

In an enlightening dialogue with Descartes, Kant, Husserl and Gadamer, Professor Seifert argues that the original inspiration of phenomenology was nothing other than the primordial insight of philosophy itself, the foundation of philosophia perennis . His radical rethinking of the phenomenological method results in a universal, objectivist philosophy in direct continuity with Plato, Aristotle and Augustine. In order to validate the classical claim to know autonomous being, the author defends Husserl's methodological principle "Back to things themselves" from empiricist (...) and idealist critics, including the later Husserl, and replies to the arguments of Kant which attempt to discredit the knowability of things in themselves. Originally published in 1982, this book culminates in a phenomenological and critical unfolding of the Augustinian cogito , as giving access to immutable truth about necessary essences and the real existence of personal being. (shrink)

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...

It has been claimed, out of admiration for the great thinker, that his political errors have nothing to do with his philosophy. If only we could be content with that! Wholly unnoticed was how damaging such a “defense” of so important a thinker really is. And how could it be made consistent with the fact that the same man, in the fifties, saw and said things about the industrial revolution and technology that today are still truly astonishing for their foresight?In (...) any case: no surprise should be expected from those of us who, for fifty years, have reflected on what dismayed us in those days and separated us from Heidegger for many years: no surprise when we hear that in 1933—and for years previous, and for how long after?—he “believed” in Hitler. But Heidegger was also no mere opportunist. If we wish to dignify his political engagement by calling it a “standpoint,” it would be far better to call it a political “illusion,” which had notably little to do with political reality. If Heidegger later, in the face of all realities, would again dream his dream from those days, the dream of a “people’s religion” [Volksreligion], the later version would embrace his deep disappointment over the actual course of affairs. But he continued guarding that dream—and kept silent about it. Earlier, in 1933 and 1934, he thought he was following his dream, and fulfilling his deepest philosophical mission, when he tried to revolutionize the university from the ground up. It was for that that he did everything that horrified us at that time. For him the sole issue was to break the political influence of the church and the tenacity of academic bossdom. Even Ernst Jünger’s vision of “the worker” [der Arbeiter] was given a place beside his own ideas about overcoming the metaphysical tradition via the reawakening of Being. Later, as is known, Heidegger wandered all the way to his radical talk of the end of philosophy. That was his “revolution.” Hans-Georg Gadamer is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. His books include Truth and Method, Philosophical Hermeneutics, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, and The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. John McCumber, associate professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, is the author of Poetic Interaction: Language, Freedom, Reason. (shrink)

We present a novel hypothetical account of entrainment in music and language, in context of the Information Dynamics of Thinking model, IDyOT. The extended model affords an alternative view of entrainment, and its companion term, pulse, from earlier accounts. The model is based on hierarchical, statistical prediction, modeling expectations of both what an event will be and when it will happen. As such, it constitutes a kind of predictive coding, with a particular novel hypothetical implementation. Here, we focus on the (...) model's mechanism for predicting when a perceptual event will happen, given an existing sequence of past events, which may be musical or linguistic. We propose a range of tests to validate or falsify the model, at various different levels of abstraction, and argue that computational modeling in general, and this model in particular, can offer a means of providing limited but useful evidence for evolutionary hypotheses. (shrink)

It is well known that Husserl’s turn to a form of “transcendental” phenomenology troubled many of his followers in Munich and Göttingen. It was just as perplexing, though, for his contemporaries in the tradition of post-Kantian transcendental philosophy. Cohen had identified the living core of Kant’s philosophy as the “transcendental method,” and Natorp, in particular, had worked extensively to distinguish the principles of the Marburg recovery of Kant from his wayward appropriation by Fichte and others. In this chapter, I (...) consider what the stakes of Husserl’s transcendental turn looked like from the Marburg perspective. Natorp warmly welcomed Husserl’s attempt to steer the nascent phenomenological movement in a “transcendental” direction, but he continued to wonder whether Husserl’s turn towards this tradition was aligned with the true spirit of Kant, or whether, on the contrary, phenomenology would settle into a broadly Fichtean appropriation of Kant’s legacy. Though Natorp’s public position is markedly conciliatory, he barely conceals his suspicion that it was the Kant of Fichte’s Jena, not the Kant of Cohen’s Marburg, to whom Husserl was (perhaps unwittingly) turning. This, I argue, is the background against which the Natorp-Husserl encounter on the eve of World War I must be understood. (shrink)

The deaths of those on whom our practical identities rely generate a sense of disorientation or alienation from the world seemingly at odds with life being meaningful. In the terms put forth in Cheshire Calhoun’s recent account of meaningfulness in life, because their existence serves as a metaphysical presupposition of our practical identities, their deaths threaten to upend a background frame of agency against which much of our choice and deliberation takes place. Here I argue for a dual role (...) for grief in addressing this threat to life’s meaningfulness. Inasmuch as grief’s object is the loss of our relationship with the deceased as it was prior to their death, grief serves to alert us to the threat to our practical identities that their deaths pose to us and motivates us to defuse this threat by revising our practical identities to reflect the modification in our relationship necessitated by their deaths. Simultaneously, the emotional complexity and richness of grief episodes provides an abundance of normative evidence regarding our relationship with the deceased and our practical identities, evidence that can enable us to re-establish our practical identities and thereby recover a sense of our lives as meaningful. (shrink)

This study analyses Jewish reactions to anti-Zionism in Norway, from the 1967 Six-Day War to the 1982 Israel–Lebanon War, focusing on the shifting political climate towards Israel. Using archival records, press materials and interviews with Jewish community activists, it explores how they defined and countered antisemitism in relation to Israel’s legitimacy. Applying Stuart Hall’s representations theory, and Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities, the study shows how solidarity with Israel marked an additional sense of belonging, giving its defenders agency and something to (...) fight for. As Norwegians, activists asserted inclusion in the national community by opposing antisemitism and defending democratic values. As Zionists, they subscribed to a group that was being attacked and needed defending. The study finds that methods used to combat anti-Zionism resembled those employed against antisemitism. Yet attempts to discredit anti-Zionism failed, furthering the confusion on the boundaries of antisemitism. (shrink)

While the relationship between Nietzsche and naturalism has been surveyed, why Nietzsche sets himself apart from nineteenth-century naturalists has not been adequately explained. I argue that it is a new method, necessary for the task of deciphering the text of homo natura, which distinguishes Nietzsche. A capacity to endure a greater degree of solitude is required in order to cultivate a new skepticism, allow sufficient attention to our drives, and enable the incorporation of truths that undermine herd morality. Thus, (...) the translation of man back into nature involves both understanding man in natural terms and a re-naturalization of man. (shrink)

RATIONALE: The concept of evidence-based medicine is important in providing efficient health care. The process uses research findings as the basis for clinical decision making. Evidence-based practice helps optimize current health care and enables the practitioners to be suitably accountable for the interventions they provide. Little work has been undertaken to examine how allied health professionals change their clinical practice in light of the latest evidence. The use of opinion leaders to disseminate new evidence around the management of low (...) class='Hi'>back pain into practice has been proposed. AIMS: The aim of this study was to investigate if physiotherapists' clinical management of patients with low back pain would change following an evidence-based education package, which utilized local opinion leaders and delivered the best evidence. METHOD: Thirty musculoskeletal physiotherapists from a Community Trust in North Staffordshire were cluster randomized by location of work, to two groups. The intervention group received an evidence-based programme on the management of low back pain, including advice regarding increasing activity levels and return to normal activity and challenging patients' fears and beliefs about their pain. The control group received a standard in-service training package on the management of common knee pathologies. The physiotherapists' clinical management of patients with low back pain was measured prior to training and 6 months post training. Outcome measures were based on physiotherapists completing 'discharge summary' questionnaires, which included information relating to the use and importance of therapies for treating their low back pain patients. RESULTS: There were few significant differences in treatment options between the intervention and control groups post training. Whilst there was some indication that physiotherapists were already utilizing aspects of psychosocial management for patients with low back pain, there was little change in what physiotherapists perceived to be important to patient recovery and actual clinical practice following the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Psychosocial factors have been identified as an important factor in the recovery of patients with low back pain. This project incorporated the latest evidence on the management of low back pain and utilized the theory of opinion leaders to disseminate this evidence into clinical practice. Whilst there were some limitations in the overall size of the study, the results help to give an insight into the challenges faced by the health care system and researchers alike to ensure quality evidence is actually utilized by practitioners for the benefits of patient care. (shrink)

for income tax evasion, but it cannot be defended for pursuing otherwise innocent people. The man responsible for bringing these four cases, Roanoke U.S. Attorney John Brownlee, has defended his actions (Rocktown Weekly, April 27-May 3, 2006, p. 11): “We have to properly track money going overseas so it’s not going to the wrong places.” But, this could be done without this law. Even though 12 agencies investigated these money transfers, led by the FBI, none charged that any went to (...) terrorist groups. “We know you are not the bad guys,” another prosecuting attorney has said. A group of agencies went looking for Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists around here after 9/11. Not finding any, they arrested four anti-Saddam Muslim Kurds, just like autoworkers went after a Chinese-American when they could not find any Japanese to beat up. This is an appalling travesty of justice. These men helped neighbors who needed to send money to families for medical care when there was no other way to do so, there being no banking system in Iraq. These men are all civic-minded, translating for schools, hospitals, and the courts since arriving here. They are being prosecuted for helping their neighbors in times of trouble. In their initial investigations, the FBI inquired whether these men knew Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. This makes as much sense as Abraham Lincoln ordering Union troops to investigate runaway slaves in the North to find out their knowledge of Jefferson Davis or John Singleton Mosby and then prosecuting them for sending money to their families in the South via an illegal method. Citizens of Harrisonburg should express their support for these four men and demand that these charges be dropped. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Roanoke should get back to what they are supposed to be doing and stop degrading our American system with such outrageous prosecutions. (shrink)

Animals, the beautiful creatures of God in the Stoic and especially in Porphyry’s sense, need to be treated as rational. We know that the Stoics ask for justice for all rational beings, but I think there is no significant proclamation from their side that directly talks in favour of animal justice. They claim the rationality of animals but do not confer any right to human beings. The later Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry magnificently deciphers this idea in his writing On Abstinence from (...) Animal Food. Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus thinks that both animals and humans are made up of the same tissues, and like humans, animals have the same perception, reasoning, and appetites. In this paper, I will attempt to show another empathetic ground that considers rational animals as friends or reincarnated relatives of human beings, as Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Theophrastus occasionally put forth in their writings. My next effort would be to decipher how Porphyry illustrates Theophratus’ perspective, not in the way (the technical theory of justice) the Stoics argued. Porphyry’s stance seems more humanistic, looking for the pertinent reasons for treating animal rights from the contention of justice that Aristotle defied since the animals can deal with reasons in his early writings. The paper highlights how much we could make justificatory demand the empathetic concern for animals from the outlook of the mentioned Greek thinkers and modern animal rights thinkers as quasi-right animals, even if my own position undertakes the empathetic ground for animals as an undeserving humanitarian way. (shrink)

Seifert explains here the distinctiveness of the method of phenomenology and, above all, seeks to reclaim the method from the idealists and for classical realism. The main question of the book is: "In our knowledge, do we also discover besides the appearances and constituted aspects of things, 'things themselves,' i.e., essential structures and laws, and existents, which are in no way constituted by human consciousness?".

In his Parts of Animals, Aristotle distinguishes three modes of the necessary.However, it is not clear just what these three modes are.Nor is it clear how this passage fits with other texts where A...

Is phenomenology a method or a philosophy (of ?ontological? character)? This question is discussed here with a recent philosophical collection of articles about the phenomenology of sport at hand. However, one finds very few concrete phenomena in this volume, but much abstract talk about the authoritative philosophers of ontology and existentialism. This gives the ?phenomenological school? a somewhat sectarian character, which is not typical in recent contributions of phenomenology. This review essay broadens out from the current volume under consideration (...) towards a history of phenomenology and a differential phenomenology of phenomenology. It is not clear how much value the volume itself, however, has for the understanding of sport as well as for the understanding of phenomenology. Nevertheless, it documents how phenomenological scholastics approach sport, which may serve as a warning at a time when positivist reductionism seems to have also become mainstream in human and social sciences. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: How outside factors affect physician decision making remains an open question of vital importance. We sought to investigate the importance of various influences on physician decision making when clinical guidelines differ from patient preference. -/- METHODS: An online survey asking 469 primary care providers (PCPs) across four practice sites whether they would order magnetic resonance imaging for a patient with uncomplicated back pain. Participants were randomized to one of four scenarios: a patient's preference for imaging (control), a patient's (...) preference plus a colleague's opinion against imaging (colleague), a patient's preference plus a professional society's recommendation against imaging (profession), or a patient's preference plus an accountable care organization's quality metric that measures physician use of imaging (ACO). Demographic information and the reasoning behind participants' decisions also were obtained. -/- RESULTS: A total of 168 PCPs completed the survey, yielding a 36% completion rate. A majority chose not to pursue imaging: control 68%, colleague 85%, profession 87%, and ACO 78%. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that participants were more likely not to order advanced imaging only when reminded of a professional society recommendation (P = 0.017). Regression also suggested that practice site exerted an effect on the primary outcome. Evidence-based medicine and clinical judgment were the most cited reasons for the decision. -/- CONCLUSIONS: Our results reinforce the potential to leverage professional societies to advance evidence-based medicine and reduce unnecessary testing. At the same time, practice site appeared to exert influence, suggesting that these recommendations must be part of local institutional culture to be effective. (shrink)

This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

Archaeological data are shadowy in a number of senses. Not only are they notoriously fragmentary but the conceptual and technical scaffolding on which archaeologists rely to constitute these data as evidence can be as constraining as it is enabling. A recurrent theme in internal archaeological debate is that reliance on sedimented layers of interpretative scaffolding carries the risk that “preunderstandings” configure what archaeologists recognize and record as primary data, and how they interpret it as evidence. The selective and destructive nature (...) of data capture in archeology further suggests that there may be little scope for putting “legacy” data to work in new ways. And yet archaeologists have been strikingly successful in mining old datasets for new insights. I situate these concerns in the broader context of debate about the epistemic standing of the historical sciences, and then consider three strategies by which archaeologists address the challenges posed by legacy data. The first two – secondary retrieval and recontextualization – are a matter of reconfiguring the scaffolding that underpins evidential reasoning. The third turns on redeploying old data in the context of computational models that support the experimental simulation of the cultural systems and contexts under study. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a new epistemic paradox that puts pressure on the claim that justification is closed under multi premise deduction. The first part of the paper will consider two well-known paradoxes—the lottery and the preface paradox—and outline two popular strategies for solving the paradoxes without denying closure. The second part will introduce a new, structurally related, paradox that is immune to these closure-preserving solutions. I will call this paradox, The Paradox of the Pill. (...) Seeing that the prominent closure-preserving solutions do not apply to the new paradox, I will argue that it presents a much stronger case against the claim that justification is closed under deduction than its two predecessors. Besides presenting a more robust counterexample to closure, the new paradox also reveals that the strategies that were previously thought to get closure out of trouble are not sufficiently general to achieve this task as they fail to apply to similar closure-threatening paradoxes in the same vicinity. (shrink)

Michael Pirron is CEO of Impact Makers, an IT consulting firm based in Virginia. Impact Makers decided to reincorporate as a Benefit Corporation when Virginia passed the legislation. In this interview with Professor Daryl Koehn from DePaul University, Pirron discusses why he chose to reincorporate and their organization’s decision to give all their profits to charity. To do this, Impact Makers set up a new financial innovation to protect the social purpose of the organization. They gave all their common stock (...) to two public charities and if the organization is ever sold, all the proceeds would go to charitable organizations in their community. (shrink)

Teaching ethics in public health programmes is not routine everywhere – at least not in most schools of public health in the European region. Yet empirical evidence shows that schools of public health are more and more interested in the integration of ethics in their curricula, since public health professionals often have to face difficult ethical decisions.

In ordinary discourse we often attribute beliefs not just to individuals but also to groups. But can groups really have genuine beliefs? This paper considers but ultimately rejects one of the main arguments in support of the claim that groups can be genuine believers – the Argument From Interpretationism – and concludes that we have good reasons to be sceptical about the existence of group beliefs. According to the Argument From Interpretationism, roughly speaking, groups qualify as genuine believers because we (...) can interpret their behaviour in much the same way that we can interpret the behaviour of individuals. While this argument may seem initially attractive, I argue that it is ultimately unsuccessful. In particular, I argue that the argument is unsuccessful even if one is generally sympathetic towards interpretationism. The reason for this, as we will see, is that a number of problems arise when we try to apply the interpretationist strategy – originally formulated with individual subjects in mind – to plural subjects or groups. In showing why the Argument From Interpretationism fails, the paper also brings into focus some more general constraints on the scope and applicability of interpretationism. (shrink)

To a large extent, the evidential base of claims in the philosophy of science has switched from thought experiments to case studies. We argue that abandoning thought experiments was a wrong turn, since they can effectively complement case studies. We make our argument via an analogy with the relationship between experiments and observations within science. Just as experiments and ‘natural’ observations can together evidence claims in science, each mitigating the downsides of the other, so too can thought experiments and case (...) studies be mutually supporting. After presenting the main argument, we look at potential concerns about thought experiments, suggesting that a judiciously applied mixed-methods approach can overcome them. (shrink)

One of the core doctrines of Mozi 墨子 is his teaching on jian'ai 兼愛, and this is discussed primarily in the three chapters bearing this term in their title.1 The term "jian'ai" and its theme also appear scattered throughout the Mozi, such as in chapters like "Standards and Rules" and the "Intention of Tian." Jian'ai has been translated into English as "Universal Love," "Inclusive Care," "Impartial Care," and other similar phrases. As these various translations suggest, there is not yet a (...) prevailing consensus on the exact meaning of jian'ai.2Despite his renowned clarity and simplicity and his skill at argumentation, those who try to pin down Mozi's teaching on jian'ai soon encounter difficulties. I think there are... (shrink)

In recent work, Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer‐Landau (2020) develop a new social version of moral intuitionism that promises to explain why our moral intuitions are trustworthy. In this paper, we raise several worries for their account and present some general challenges for the broader class of views we call Social Moral Intuitionism. We close by reflecting on Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer‐Landau's comparison between what they call the “perceptual practice” and the “moral intuition practice”, which we take to raise some difficult (...) normative and meta‐normative questions for theorists of all stripes. (shrink)

This essay intends to criticize Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of language on the basis of which he justifies the proposition that learning is only possible through conversation. Although he understands as language non-verbal forms of communication such as gestures, physiognomic expressions, looks, Gadamer conceives language as word. However, I believe, and no one would deny it, language needs to be understood and, above all, learned. So here is the motivating problem of this essay: if language has to be understood as word, (...) how is it possible to learn it before mastering the word during childhood? To answer this problem, first, I clarify what I understand as philosophical conception of education. Then I demonstrate, in a broad examination of Gadamer’s essays written over five decades, the absence of a pre-predicative conception of language. Finally, I outline a pre-predicative conception of language by which I intend to show how it is possible to learn language before mastering the word. (shrink)

This paper responds to Love's Labor, Eva Feder Kittay's seminal contribution to feminist disability theory, arguing that Kittay's “nested obligations” approach creates a two-tiered system of justice in which care relationships built around private dependence and private obligation are figured as wholly prepolitical, to the detriment of both gender justice and disability justice. I suggest that centering the civic membership of the disabled person allows us to keep what is valuable in Kittay's contribution, namely her theorization of the nature of (...) care and its political significance, and her call for collective support of care relationships, while omitting the nesting of obligations and resituating care recipients and care workers as equal and interdependent. (shrink)

This paper aims to construct a comprehensive theory of royal succession of Mencius. Basically, there are three distinct modes of royal succession described in the Mencius: abdication, hereditary succession, and revolution. Abdication involves the voluntary transfer of power by the incumbent ruler to a virtuous minister. Hereditary succession entails the transmission of power to the son of the incumbent ruler. Revolution marks the foundation of a new dynasty by deposing the incumbent ruler. What are their exact relationships? In contrast to (...) hereditary succession, which represents “rule by heredity,” abdication and revolution are often categorized together as “rule by virtue,” which became the backbone of the Confucian virtue politics. However, Mencius' writings, especially 5A5 and 5A6, suggest his clear intention to establish a coherent, or at least, compatible relationship between abdication and hereditary succession. This paper analyzes Mencius' discussions on royal succession to elucidate how he perceived the connection between abdication and hereditary succession, and to explore why he considered revolution as a separate category. In this study, I refer to the former as the “entrenched‐trust model” and distinguish the latter as “anticipated‐trust model.” The final section of the paper compares the three modes of royal succession in terms of the nature of the people's trust, the susceptibility of the people's approval, and the candidate's disinterest in power. (shrink)

Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an exercise that reiterates the prejudices of one's times and at (...) best allows one to persuade others by appealing to these prejudices, or is it the royal road to first principles and philosophical wisdom? In From Puzzles to Principles? May Sim gathers experts to argue both these positions and offer a variety of interpretive possibilities. The contributors' thoughtful reflections on the nature and limits of dialectic should play a crucial role in Aristotelian scholarship. (shrink)

According to Hume’s Law, we cannot infer moral conclusions from wholly non-moral premises; or, more concisely, we cannot infer an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. While Hume’s Law (at least in qualified form) has enjoyed widespread acceptance, recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in anti-Humean accounts of moral knowledge. According to these accounts, we can come to know moral conclusions via inferences from wholly non-moral premises. The main aim of this paper is to defend Hume’s Law against these recent (...) threats and to argue, more generally, that there are good reasons to remain pessimistic about anti-Humean accounts of moral knowledge. In particular, the paper (1) raises doubts about the leading accounts of inferential moral knowledge currently found in the literature, (2) proposes a new account of inferential moral knowledge that promises to avoid the shortcomings of its predecessors, but (3) argues that the new account too is ultimately unsuccessful. (shrink)

Although he does not have an explicit theory of supposition as is found in the works of Latin medieval philosophers, Avicenna has two doctrines giving something equivalent: the threefold distinction of quiddity, corresponding to a division of simple, personal and material supposition, and his analyses of truth conditions for categorical propositions, where sentential context determines in part the reference of their terms. While he does address which individuals are being referred to by the universal terms used there, Avicenna concentrates more (...) on the varied temporal durations of the predications being made. In Western terms, he has incorporated ampliation and restriction into the theory of supposition itself. (shrink)

Analytic just war theorists often attempt to construct ideal theories of military justice on the basis of intuitions about imaginary and sometimes outlandish examples, often taken from non-military contexts. This article argues for a sharp curtailment of this method and defends, instead, an empirically and historically informed approach to the ethical scrutiny of armed conflicts. After critically reviewing general philosophical reasons for being sceptical of the moral-theoretic value of imaginary hypotheticals, the article turns to some of the special problems (...) that this method raises for appraisals of warfare. It examines some of the hypothetical examples employed in the construction of Jeff McMahan’s revisionist just war theory, and finds that they sometimes stipulate incompre- hensible conditions, lead to argumentative impasses of diverging yet uncertain intuitions, and distract attention away from the real problems of war as we empirically know it. In contrast, empirical and historical studies of warfare rein- force the deep connections between facts and values, and compel theorists to face uncomfortable moral ambiguities. Perhaps most importantly, the analytic method of focusing on imaginary hypothetical examples can not only be distracting, but it can also be genuinely dangerous. Hence, the article pays special attention to the way in which a seemingly innocuous fiction like the famous Ticking Time Bomb scenario can come to frame a new paradigm of inhumanity in the treatment of prisoners of war. (shrink)

Schools worldwide have started opening doors to welcome back students who, for almost two years, have been stuck studying at home. This study looks at the standpoint of Filipino students on going back to regular face-to-face schooling. There were 2,274 students of different tiers of education (high school, collegiate, graduate) from different major island groups of the Philippines (Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao) who participated in the study. The study used a mixed-method of descriptive statistics to present the quantitative (...) data gathered and thematic analysis of qualitative responses from the subjects. The majority of all the respondents favored going back to the physical classroom, and little only favored staying using the distance mode. In the qualitative analysis, the recurring reasons of the students varied from personal, economic, and fear of getting the virus. It was concluded that Filipino students want to go back to schooling. Moreover, a sizeable amount preferred hybrid while a small number preferred to stay in online or distance mode. Educational institutions should always observe the covid 19 protocol when students go back. (shrink)

The article presents the construction and structuring phases of an action research project, which involves indigenous populations, approved by the Abdias Nascimento Academic Development Program. The proposal aims to foster national and international cooperation, aimed at emancipatory and intercultural education and the promotion of racial equality and inclusion, focusing on social vulnerability and valuing the sociocultural and linguistic specificities of indigenous populations. The intention is to analyze the relationship between traditional care practices in the pregnancy-puerperal cycle of indigenous women and (...) the behaviors adopted at different levels of health care; identify social determinants of indigenous maternal and infant mortality; validate simple and digital sociocultural educational technologies; and provide evidence for the formulation of inclusive and affirmative public policies that contribute to the reduction of indigenous maternal and child morbidity and mortality. Methodologically, it is an action research, of a collaborative nature, with characteristics of social technology that seeks to bring the researcher closer to the participants and the object of investigation, producing knowledge through the active participation of researchers in the investigation and intervention. Therefore, this essay shows the potential of this research project, which is to encourage discussion and development of actions that promote social inclusion and emancipatory education for indigenous peoples. (shrink)

Mozi’s 墨子 doctrine of impartial care has been interpreted predominantly through the lens of Mengzi 孟子, that is, as “love without distinctions” versus “love with distinctions.” However, I think Mengzi saw only half of the picture, as his focus was exclusively on the difference between Confucianism and Mohism in regard to the scope, intensity, and sequence of love. In this essay, I argue that Mozi’s impartial care is also characteristically different in kind from the Confucian notion of humaneness. My analysis (...) and comparison of their usage of the word ai 愛 shows that Mozi’s ai is material-oriented care, while the Confucian ai is emotion-oriented care. I further argue that Mozi had this particular understanding of care largely because he held a quite negative view of human emotions. For him, human emotions are unreliable and harmful for the practice of care. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 142 - 169 I offer an explanation of why the fallacy of “accident” is so called. By ‘accident’ here, Aristotle does not mean accidental predication but being _per accidens_. Understood in this way, the fallacy of accident can be analyzed in terms of the rules that Aristotle gives for being _per accidens_. The fallacy of accident lost the original justification for its name in the late Greek period. It became associated with accidental predication (...) and not with being _per accidens_. The fallacy was then solved by construing it syllogistically so that the paralogisms became invalid through not having a universal major premise. This medieval analysis became the dominant approach in the medieval period but has led to confusion over the fallacy of accident in millennia of logic books. I end by considering how to formulate the fallacy of accident more fruitfully in modern terms via Aristotle’s original approach. (shrink)

I give an analysis of the logical structure of statements describing duties in social roles. Role terms like ‘doctor’ should not be treated as simple predicates, as natural kind terms, like ‘human being’, are. When role terms are treated as simple predicates, fallacies may result. Rather, treat role terms (M) as complex predicates with a simple subject, a person (S), as a base; ‘S qua M’, and then analyze their reduplicative structure. I illustrate and support this analysis by considering sophisms, (...) traditionally known as committing the fallacy of secundum quid et simpliciter, about conflicts of duties in different roles. I end with some remarks about personal integrity. (shrink)

As Sungmoon Kim points out, contemporary Confucian studies has been disproportionately focused on the ethical side of the tradition. In this regard, Kim’s book, Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: The Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi, makes an enormous contribution to the field of Confucian political thought. What makes his project even more valuable is that he goes beyond the textual analysis of political concepts and ideas in classical Confucian writings and builds them into a coherent and systematic political theory.In what (...) follows, I will examine Kim’s reconstruction of the Confucian political theories of Mencius and Xunzi. However, rather than taking issue with whether his reconstructions are true... (shrink)